You can easily OPT out of sending the data to Google. You can use ZoneAlarm or other firewall software to "confirm" that it is not reporting back to Google.

I ran it for about a week, but noticed that my system was getting slower and slower. I check and run a defrag and I have the most fragmented drive I think I've ever had. Not saying it is 100% Google fault, but either that or some other applications on my system don't get along with it.

Ran Diskeeper 8 on it and defragged, removed Desktop Google, and system appears to be back to normal again.

Your mileage may vary...